Here is how I migrated the Sahana CVS repository to git, as part of the work that the Sahana New Zealand Cluster is gearing up to do.

It was actually a lot simpler than I expected!

Simple import

In a newly created directory:

  1. Do the initial setup:
    cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/sahana login
  2. Run the migration:
    git cvsimport -k -m -v -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/sahana sahana-phase2
  3. Wait several hours for it to finish!

Fixing the author names

The only thing I didn't like from the above import was that all of the commit authors were missing full names and email addresses.

So I grabbed the list of Sahana project members from Sourceforge and created a mappping like this in a text file:

ajuonline=Ajay Kumar <[email protected]>  
akshits88=Akshit Sharma <[email protected]>  
bhyde=Ben Hyde <[email protected]>

Then I ran the import with the -A parameter:

git cvsimport -A username_map.txt -k -m -v -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/sahana sahana-phase2

Syncing new commits

To keep the git repository in sync with CVS and collect any new commits, simply run the same git cvsimport command again.

My next steps will be to setup an automated sync script to keep this repository up to date with the Sourceforge one.